As a physiotherapist in Toronto, I implore you not do this exercise if you love your back!
This movement places incredible and dangerous amounts of compressive loading through the spine. There are much better options that will spare your back and build the muscular endurance that you need to stay or become low back pain free.
Dev Chengkalath
What years of dedication and consistency can do for you.
Now go out and move!
Dev Chengkalath
Myth busting continued…
Myth: When exercising, you turn fat in to muscle.
Fact: Spend a few minutes surfing the Internet or reading popular magazines with fitness as the topic and you’ll certainly find that magical statement claiming to turn fat into muscle.
Why is this not possible?
For starters, muscle and fat are two separate substances. To change one substance in to the other would be akin to turning a stick of butter into a chicken breast. It’s just not possible!
Muscles are made up of amino acids strung together to form proteins in a specific arrangement. Fat is just that. It’s fat. There is no method available that can convert a fat into a protein.
It is, however, possible is to burn fat off and build the muscle. This reduces the visibility of the fat and increases the appearance of lean and toned muscle.
Myth: Certain exercises can reduce fat in specific areas or tone up certain features such as your tummy.
Fact: The body does not spot reduce.
What does that mean?
Well, if you did thousands of triceps kickbacks, you wouldn’t see the flab melt away. What you would be doing is making the muscles in your arms grow without greatly influencing the fat that sits on top. Sure, your arms would be firm and toned! Unfortunately, your new-found pipes would be hidden underneath that layer of padding.
Your body takes energy from multiple sources to meet its requirements. That means the energy you burn by doing that endless triceps exercises doesn’t just come from the fat from your arms but from all over your body!
To improve your workouts, instead of isolating body parts, try full body or compound movements such as lunges or squats. These exercises use a larger number of muscles, which in turn will burn more calories for energy.
From the previous post about female training myths, what was your answer?
For many of the women I’ve worked with in the past, what went wrong?
These women followed some of the most out-dated exercise advice available or they fell for the marketing gimmicks and empty promises. They wanted the easy way out.
Many of these fallacies have been propagated from one person to the next until they take on the weight of truth.
In fact, some of these nuggets of gym lore have even been passed on by purported experts in exercise such as personal trainers or therapists, thus falsely adding to their credibility!
In this series of posts, I’ll take you through some of the biggest exercise myths that affect women and how to reach your fitness goal by going against what may seem intuitive.
Read on and overcome these common exercise myths that are stopping you from achieving the body of your dreams.
Myth: Losing weight and losing body fat is the same thing, so check the scale often.
Fact: The act of stepping on a scale and measuring the pull of gravity is a ritual that many women undertake on an almost daily basis. For most women, losing weight is considered the same as losing body fat. If the scale drops, then the exercise or diet program is considered a success.
In some cases, this may be an appropriate objective measure. In most cases, however, this is a step in the wrong direction.
A better method of obtaining objective body measures is to gauge how your clothing fits: Is your dress size down? Do you pants feel looser? Do your tops feel less restrictive?
This will take in to consideration any healthy and important increases in lean body mass that you may have made.
When using a scale, there is no differentiation between adding precious fat-burning muscle while losing non-functional body fat. This leads to “false” appearance of often disappointing numbers on the scale, which don’t reflect true progress.
David Bell, considered the founder of the discipline called parkour.
Human Movement and Motor Control at its finest.
Now go out and move.
Dev Chengkalath
